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Collaboratives
Grants program for U of M faculty from any discipline
Application deadline: June 30, 2008 (pre-proposals); final proposals are due August 5
Funding is available for up to 10 interdisciplinary research projects over the next 5 years. Competitions will be run annually. Up to 2 proposals will receive funding each year.
The Center for German & European Studies invites proposals from U of M faculty members—as individuals or as teams of two—for interdisciplinary research projects in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Law, Public Policy, and Business. Fundable projects examine the philosophical, social, historical, political, economic, legal, and cultural issues that make Europe (and Germany) a locus of contested ideas. Funding is available for up to 10 projects in the period 2008 through 2012.
Research collaboratives are designed to connect interdisciplinary groups of scholars (faculty and graduate students) from the U of M with their counterparts at another university. The partner university may be the University of Wisconsin—CGES' former consortial partner—or another North American university, or even a university in Europe.
Each research collaborative involves a joint graduate seminar or credit-bearing workshop.
Research Collaboratives, it is expected, will have long-term effects and lead to publications, further collaboration, undergraduate coursework, etc.
CGES provides a generous package of support for the faculty on the University of Minnesota side of the research collaborative. (Research teams at the partner institution cannot be financially supported by CGES and are encouraged to find in-house support at their institution). The funding package includes:
- A 50% graduate student research assistant for two semesters
- $3,000 for seminar planning and research development
- Support for faculty and graduate student travel for joint meetings and travel relating to the research project for up to $1,000 total over the life of the project. For each approved travel request, CGES will pay allowable travel, per diem, and lodging expenses for Minnesota faculty and graduate students
- $3,000 as seed money for a concluding conference or other follow-up activity
All Research Collaboratives will run over two semesters.
In its first "take-off" semester, the Collaborative faculty members and the RA will begin to pursue a fully articulated research agenda and develop further the intellectual parameters of the project. At the beginning of the "take-off" semester, Research Collaborative faculty also will make arrangements for a joint graduate seminar that will be conducted via interactive television.
During the Seminar semester of the Collaborative, lead faculty on both campuses will co-teach a graduate seminar related to the research. Ideally, both sides of the Collaborative seminar will meet in person at least once over the course of the seminar.
Soon after the conclusion of the seminar, the Research Collaborative will submit reports about plans for the institutionalization of the research project and about the publications emerging from the Collaborative.
Examples of Previously Funded Research Topics
Previous Research Collaboratives have explored the following topics:
- Contemporary Germany and the Trans-Atlantic Culture of Memory
- Language and Immigration
- Industrial Ecology, Culture, and Environmental Sustainability: Corporate Transitions in North America, German, and Europe
- Fascism and Its Legacies in Europe
- Experts and the Use of Expertise in Modern Industrial Culture
- Gender, Genre and Politics in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1776–1989
- Anti-Semitism in Modern European Culture, 1770–1945
- Contested Urban Futures: U.S. and E.U.
- Out of Europe: Time, Place, and Memory Since 1945
- Citizenship and Identity in Central Europe
- Expansion, Integration, and Homogenization in the European Union: Assessing the Role of Foreign Direct Investment
- The Impact of the Expansion of the European Union on Labor Markets and the Location of Production
- Holocaust, Genocide, and the Law
- Eastern Europe in Transition: Property Relations and Society
Please note that these examples do not represent any order of priority for the Center. A broad range of topics will be considered. For more info on these research projects, including the range of institutions and faculty involved, see the CGES research pages.
Application materials and awards process
The application process involves two steps: submission of a pre-proposal and, after speedy review by a CGES faculty committee, an invitation to submit a full proposal.
Pre-proposals are due by June 30, 2008; invitations to submit a full proposal will be issued July 15; finalized full proposal is due August 5. Awards will be announced in mid-August. Please submit all materials to CGES in electronic form.
Step 1:
please submit a pre-proposal of 2-4 pages that
- outlines your proposed research project, explains its relevance to our understanding of Europe, sketches the proposed seminar and its audience, and briefly addresses anticipated research outcomes
- lists faculty who will participate in the collaborative. The partner institution will need to have ITV technology to be eligible
- states the proposed time line of your project, including when you would like to run the associated research seminar. For this round, CGES is particularly interested in projects that would be active over the next 2 years.
Step 2:
Upon invitation, please submit a full proposal of 5-7 pages (excl. supporting materials) by August 5.
For questions, please contact Sabine Engel.